The fire between us had a name.
Ardor.
It was the first word that came to mind.
“Who took that?” I hoped my voice was even, or a little crispy, but it sounded…strangled.
“Beniamino.” Naz’s eyes lit up with the heat coming from the photo. “This memory cannot be darkened, ah? Since it will forever be preserved in the passionate fire of the sun.”
It will forever be preserved in the passionate fire of the sun.
If I was a bird in his eyes, he knocked me from the sky when he spoke that way. The man was a poet, like his grandfather, Marzio.
“Yeah,” was all I could get out. I kept scrolling, looking through his camera roll. All the places he’d traveled filled it. In a few he’d taken selfies, but even then, he’d held the phone out, making sure to capture whatever was in the background.
“And you call me a bird?” I acted like I was looking through more of his scenic photos, but I had landed back at the one of us in eternal Rome. “You’ve been so many places.”
“It’s a broad world, no matter how small it seems.”
“What it must feel like to be your kind of bird.”
“A lonely one?”
I looked up from the phone and met his eyes. With that vulnerable look in them…lonely, like he said…he could take down entire villages of women willing to save him from it.
I handed him his phone back after I hearted the one of us in Rome as a favorite. “Look around, Naz. I always did in New York. Birds flock together. Rarely have I ever seen one without another one close by. You’re never alone. Because like me, you have wings. You fly.”
We started walking again, silence between us.
“What are you thinking?” I whispered.
“You are a devastating heart attack.” He set his hand over his heart, like he was trying to keep it inside of his chest.
My laughter seemed to echo around us, then…silence again. His devastating heart-attack comment made me think about hospitals, and since I didn’t want to bring up Sonny, I asked him about his dad.
“Is he…okay?” I wasn’t sure if he was going to trust me with the information, but I wanted to ask to show that I cared. Lothario wasn’t a popular figure in the Fausti family, which maybe for him was a step up from just being considered a spare, but he was still Naz’s father.
“He is awake now and dealing with a new life. He will be airlifted to a hospital in Rome tomorrow.”
“Ah,” was all I could think to say. I wanted to tell him Lothario should talk to Sonny. He’d had a few close calls over the years, especially since he dealt with dangerous bookies, but it never seemed to faze him. He always ended up in the same place he’d always been. In front of the TV in his room, a case of beer on the side table, the back of his head our only view.
Naz’s phone beeped and he said, “Time to eat,uccellino selvatico.”
“You really set a timer?”
He tapped his temple. “I usually have no problem remembering anything. However. I have learned heart attacks are distracting.”
“Where should we go?”
“You decide.”
I turned in a circle, lifting my pointer finger, and when I stopped, I pointed, “There.”
He gave a sharp nod. “There it is.”
We headed in that direction.
“Are we going back to Rome tonight?” I asked.
